Nostalgia for the Light (2010) - full transcript

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT

The old German telescope,

that I've seen once again
after so many years,

is still working

in Santiago, Chile.

I owe my passion for astronomy to it.

These objects, which could have come

from my childhood home,

remind me of that far-off moment

when one thinks
one has left childhood behind.

At that time,
Chile was a haven of peace



isolated from the world.

Santiago slept

in the foothills of the Cordillera,
detached from the rest of the world.

I loved science-fiction stories,

lunar eclipses

and watching the sun
through a piece of smoky glass.

I learnt by heart
the name of certain stars

and had a map of the sky.

It was a simple provincial life.

Nothing ever happened.

The Presidents of the Republic

walked unescorted through the streets.

Only the present moment existed.

One day this peaceful life
came to an end.



A revolutionary tide
swept us to the centre of the world.

I was lucky
to be a part of this noble venture

which woke us all from our slumber.

This time of hope
is forever engraved in my soul.

At around the same time,

science fell in love
with the Chilean sky.

A group of astronomers

found they could touch the stars

in the Atacama Desert.

Enveloped in star dust,

scientists from all over the planet

created the biggest telescopes
in the world.

Some time later,

a coup d'etat
swept away democracy, dreams

and science.

Despite living in a devastation zone,

Chilean astronomers

carried on working, supported
by their foreign colleagues.

One by one,
the secrets of the sky

began to fall upon us
like translucent rain.

In Chile, astronomy is a passion
shared by many.

I'm just one enthusiast
amongst thousands.

Our humid planet
has only one small brown patch

that has absolutely no humidity.

The vast Atacama Desert.

I imagine that man
will soon walk on Mars.

This ground beneath my feet

bears the strongest resemblance
to that faraway world.

There is nothing.

No insects, no animals, no birds.

And yet, it is full of history.

For 1 0,000 years,

this region has been a transit route.

Rivers of stone

provided natural paths.

The caravans of llamas and men

came and went
between the high plains and the sea.

It's a condemned land,
permeated with salt,

where human remains are mummified
and objects are frozen in time.

The air,

transparent, thin,

allows us to read

this vast open book of memory

page after page.

The telescopes

are the window to the cosmos.

This is where
the celestial mystery begins.

In the glow of the night,
the stars observe us.

At the bottom of the lakes of sand

are petrified fish and molluscs.

I can pick them up with my hands.

The hills and the Indian fortresses
merge into one.

Apparently there are meteorites
under the rocks

that can affect a compass.

I have always believed

that our origins
could be found in the ground,

buried beneath the soil
or at the bottom of the sea.

But now, I think that our roots
are up above,

beyond the light.

Where do we come from,

where are we
and where are we going?

Where do we come from?
It's a key question.

It has always been
at the core of our civilisations.

As for religion,

the world of science today

tends to separate science from religion.

And yet the fundamental questions
pondered by man

are of a religious origin and motive.

That's my opinion.

It's a matter of discovering
the origins of mankind,

of our planet, the solar system.

Finding out how a galaxy,
a planet or a star is born.

All these questions about our origins,

we astronomers try to answer.

It's a never-ending story.

What eats away at the astronomer
is "the origin of".

I study diffuse galaxies
whose origins are a mystery.

We don't know
why they do not self-destruct.

We try to shed light on
these difficult questions.

That is science.

We try to answer two questions,

we do so as best we can,
and four more arise.

That is the nature of science.

Some say that we're not very efficient,

that in answering two questions,
we trigger four others.

But that's science; it's never resolved.

That's what I like about it.

The mystery of science is eternal.

Below these domes

are other messages
which also come from afar.

These rock carvings,
made by pre-Columbian shepherds,

are over 1 ,000 years old.

Here, more than anywhere else,

I feel that the desert

is revealing a secret.

All of our life experiences,

including this conversation,
happened in the past.

Even if it is a matter
of millionths of a second.

The camera I am looking at now
is a few metres away

and is therefore already several
millionths of a second in the past

in relation to the time on my watch.

The signal takes time to arrive.

The light reflected from the camera
or from you,

reaches me after a moment.

A fleeting moment,
as the speed of light is very fast.

How long does it take
for moonlight to reach us?

Just over a second.

- And sunlight?
- Eight minutes.

So we don't see things
at the very instant we look at them?

No, that's the trap.

The present doesn't exist.

It's true.

The only present that might exist

is the one in my mind.

It's the closest we come
to the absolute present.

And not even then!
When I think,

it takes a moment for the signal
to travel between my senses.

Between when I say "this is me"
and when I touch myself,

there is a lapse in time.

The past is the astronomers' main tool.

We manipulate the past.

We are used to living behind the times.

That's how it is.

Like an archaeologist
who also studies the past.

Exactly.

A not-so-distant past,
but it's the same.

- He tries to imagine...
- Exactly.

A historian does the same thing.

Geologists, too.

They know that the deeper they dig,
the older the things they'll find.

It's the same for us.

The present is a fine line.

A puff of air would destroy it.

On this flat rock face

are the outlines of two human faces,
perhaps masks.

They were carved
by the pre-Columbian shepherds

who passed through here.

It was a natural route
to San Pedro de Atacama.

These drawings resemble those carved
on the mountain opposite.

We are on the prehistoric road
that runs alongside the rock drawings.

The modern road
was laid on top of the old one.

There on the right,

we can see drawings
of llamas and people.

The astronomers

created an enormous telescope

to bring two seemingly
incompatible things closer:

the origins of everything

and the past
of everything we are today.

Two different situations...

Today they receive the past.

But, at the same time, they receive
the most distant past of all

which is the origin
of the whole system.

They study one past
and we study another.

They are in the present
recording a past

which they have to reconstruct.

They have only minute clues.

They are archaeologists like us.

Why are some places more suitable
for this study of the past?

It's a real mystery.

The question is: why are there
archaeologists and astronomers

in the same place?

The answer is simple.

Here, the past is more accessible
than elsewhere.

The translucency of the sky

is, for the archaeologists of space,

what the dry climate is for us.

It facilitates our access
to evidence from the past.

The translucency enables the astronomers

to shed light
on the mysteries of space.

This is why
we share the same territory.

We are at a gateway to the past.

That's right. It's a gateway
we know how to go through.

But when we come out again,

will we have made discoveries
that will shake our lives forever?

This remains a mystery to me.

And yet, this country has not yet
considered its past.

It is held in the grasp
of the coup d'etat

which seems to immobilise it.

This is the paradox
which concerns you most.

This is where the problem lies.

It's worthy of your concern.

I totally agree with you.

It's true that it's paradoxical.

We've hidden away

our nearest past.

It's a huge paradox.

Listen, we know hardly anything
about the 1 9th century.

How many secrets are we keeping

about the 1 9th century?

We have never acknowledged
that we marginalised our Indians.

It's practically a state secret.

We've done nothing
to try to understand

why, in the 1 9th century,

staggering economic phenomena
such as saltpetre appeared,

yet today there's nothing left.

We've kept our recent past hidden.

We've concealed it.

It's absurd.

We avoid looking at this recent history.

It's as if this history might accuse us.

And that, dear friend,
helps no one.

Not the right,
not the centre, not the left.

Like other of the planet's deserts,

the Chilean desert
is an ocean of buried minerals.

In the open air

lie men who died working.

Like geological layers,

layers of miners and of Indians

are swept by a relentless wind.

They were nomadic families.

Their belongings, their memories
are nearby.

Near the observatories,
in the middle of this vast emptiness

are the ruins of Chacabuco,

the biggest concentration camp
of Pinochet's dictatorship.

The ruins of this camp

are in fact the ruins of a mine.

The military didn't have to build
a camp, as, by way of cells,

they used the houses
of the 1 9th-century miners,

a time when the mining industry
was like slavery.

All the military had to do

was to add barbed wire.

I was imprisoned
in a concentration camp in the North

from November 9th, 1 973,

until October 1 974.

In Chacabuco, did you hear of a group

who observed the stars?

Yes, I was part of this group.

There were about 20 of us.

Was the person who led the group
an astronomer?

He was a doctor who knew a lot
about astronomy: Dr Alvarez.

During the day,
he gave us theory lessons

and, at night,
we went outside to watch the stars.

What we learnt of astronomy

was to recognise the constellations.

- Did you have a telescope?
- No.

The sky was so transparent

that the stars

were like small light bulbs.

How did you find the constellations?

He showed us how to make a device.

A tripod with a dial on top

that showed the hours.

A kind of balance contraption
was fixed on that

with a needle
and two crossed wires.

That served as a viewfinder.

What did you feel
watching the stars whilst in prison?

We all had a feeling

of great freedom.

Observing the sky and the stars,

marvelling at the constellations,

we felt completely free.

"In this house lived
the following political prisoners:

Víctor Astudillo,

Luis Henríquez,

René Olivares,

Enrique..."
You can only see the "E".

"Enrique Pastorelli."
I remember him well.

And here:
"Federico Quilodrán Chávez."

The military
banned the astronomy lessons.

They were convinced
that the prisoners could escape

guided by the constellations.

Luis's dignity lies in his memory.

He wasn't able to escape,

but, by communicating with the stars,

he managed to preserve
his inner freedom.

He remembers traces
that have been erased,

electric cables, watchtowers.

Luis is a transmitter of history.

Miguel, the architect of memory,

is also a lover of stars.

He was in five detention centres

where he contemplated the sky
and used his memory

to carve each prison into his mind.

When the military saw

the published drawings of the camps
which they had dismantled,

they were dumbstruck.

Like that.

That's how you measured?

That's right.

When I decided to leave a testimony

of what a concentration camp
in Chile was like,

I began to measure in this way
the different spaces,

so as to be able to draw them one day
if I ever got out.

Each day as I walked to work,

I discreetly measured
the assembly courtyard.

It measured 30 metres,
ten by three or five by six.

There.

30 metres.

Here something important is missing.

At the far end
was a solitary confinement block.

It measured six by nine.

Here, there was
another row of barbed wire.

It was everywhere.

At night, by candle light,

I made my drawings.

When I'd finished,

I tore them into tiny shreds

that I hid in case of a night raid.

The next day,
I was one of the first up

and I went to the latrines
to get rid of them.

I memorised it all easily

and, when I was in exile in Denmark,

I drew these places again
as if I'd known them all my life.

That is memory.

An architect, at least, is capable

of memorising all the dimensions.

Miguel and his wife

are for me a metaphor of Chile.

He is remembering

whilst Anita is forgetting

as she has Alzheimer's disease.

At an altitude of 5,000 metres,
the radio telescope ALMA

is being made by several countries.

It will have 60 antennas,

or 60 ears
to listen to the waves of the sky.

It will be able to listen to bodies

whose light doesn't reach the earth.

It will register the energy
produced during the Big Bang.

Víctor, a 29-year-old engineer,

will be one of the rare witnesses
to this event

which to me seems so unreal.

How did you get into astronomy?

My mother encouraged me
to apply to ESO, the observatory.

- You were born in Germany?
- Yes, Germany.

- So you are a child of exile.
- I'm a child from nowhere.

I'm not from Chile, nor am I
from the country where I was born.

- Do you feel comfortable here?
- Yes, I feel Chilean.

I am Chilean.

The energy this antenna will detect

was emitted billions of years ago.

It is from the past
and only reaches us today

but it belongs to history, to the past.

Your mother was expelled from Chile
during the dictatorship.

Nowadays, she cares for ex-prisoners
who were tortured.

Are you aware that you
and your mother work in the past?

The past is at the core of our work.

Both of us

try to learn from the past,
from history,

to build a better future.

According to one official commission,

30,000 people were tortured in Chile.

But it is estimated

that another 30,000
did not come forward.

The women who search for their dead

demand an answer

from those responsible
for the disappearances.

These women

come across those who participated
in the disappearance of their relatives

in the streets of their villages.

The torturers

who walk free in the streets.

This kind of situation
is traumatic for those affected.

Crossing paths with someone

who arrested their husband or son

traumatises them all over again.

Maybe this is one of the differences

between the two searches of the past.

What do you think of these women

who search for the remains
of their loved ones?

They continue to sift the desert.

To compare
two completely different things,

their process is similar to ours,
with one big difference.

We can sleep peacefully,

after each night spent
observing the past.

Our search doesn't disturb our sleep.

Sometimes the heat bothers us,
but we sleep.

The next day, we plunge back,
untroubled, into the past.

But these women
must find it hard to sleep

after searching
through human remains,

looking for a past
they are unable to find.

They'll not sleep well until they do so.

That is the major difference.

There's no comparison.

That's my opinion.

What is strange

is that society should understand
these women better

than it does astronomers.

But the opposite is true.

Society has a greater understanding
of the astronomers,

in their search for the past,

than of these women
who search for human remains.

There is a certain reticence
and that worries me.

People say,
"It's in the past, enough's enough!"

That's easy to say.

Until they find their loved ones,

they'll never find peace.

I can't imagine
what they must be going through.

I don't know what I'd do

if a sister, a brother
or one of my parents

were lost somewhere in the desert,

in this vast expanse.

Personally, as an astronomer,

I would imagine
my father or mother in space,

lost in the galaxy somewhere.

I would look for them
through the telescopes.

I would be very anxious

as it would be difficult
to find them in the vastness.

It's the same for these women

as the Atacama Desert
is so immense.

Who knows where they are?

For 1 7 years, Pinochet assassinated
and buried the bodies

of thousands of political prisoners.

So that the bodies could never be found,

the dictatorship dug them up
and disposed of the remains elsewhere

or threw them into the sea.

The women of Calama
searched for 28 years,

until 2002.

Some of them continue to search
as victims are still being found.

During the shooting of this film,
they found the body

of a disappeared female prisoner

in another part of the desert.

These women

provided us with various facts,

one of which proved vital.

Whilst searching in the desert,

they discovered something curious:

tiny pieces of human bones.

An expert confirmed
that these were indeed human bones.

It was strange,
the pieces were so tiny.

They weren't skeletons,

but fragments of skulls, of feet,

shards of long bones.

When they took us there,

we, as archaeologists,

noticed that the soil
had been turned over.

These fragments, which are flat,

must be the splinters of a thighbone
or the bone of an arm.

The exterior of these bones
is smooth.

This must be the inside of a bone

as it is porous.

It is much thicker.

Their whiteness
is due to calcination by the sun.

What did you find of your brother?

A foot. It was still in his shoe.

Some of his teeth.

I found part of his forehead,
his nose,

nearly all of the left side
of his skull.

The bit behind the ear
with a bullet mark.

The bullet came out here.

That shows he was shot from below.

I don't know what position he was in.

They finished him off
with a bullet in the forehead.

All of this part of the skull
was shattered.

They shot him twice in the head.

I remembered his tender expression

and this was all that remained.

A few teeth and bits of bones.

And a foot.

Our final moment together,

was when his foot was at my house.

When the mass grave was discovered,

I knew it was his shoe and his foot.

That night, I got up

and went to stroke his foot.

There was... a smell of decay.

It was still in a sock.

A burgundy sock.

Dark red.

I took it out of the bag
and looked at it.

I remained sitting in the lounge
for a long time.

My mind was blank.

I was incapable of thinking.

I was in total shock.

The next day,
my husband went to work

and I spent all morning
with my brother's foot.

We were reunited.

It was a great joy
and a great disappointment

because only then did I take in the fact
that my brother was dead.

The bodies of Calama

were dug up with a machine.

A machine that digs,

with five teeth.

These bodies were dug up on the orders
of the military high command.

But fragments of skulls

fell from the right side of the machine,

and of feet, from the left side.

The bodies were loaded onto a truck.

We photographed the marks
and reconstructed the operation.

The bodies were then taken to a place
which even today remains unknown.

The truck had a driver.

There were soldiers
to unload the bodies.

And, most importantly, the truck
was part of a detachment,

a division under military authority.

It's up to the military
to provide this information

so that our friends from Calama

can give their dead
the burial they deserve.

Will you carry on searching?

For as long as I can,

if we must carry on searching,

I will do so.

Even if I have many doubts

and I ask myself questions
which I can't answer.

They say they unearthed them,
put them in bags

and threw them into the sea.

Did they really
throw them into the sea?

I can't find the answer
to this question.

What if they threw them out nearby,
somewhere in the mountains?

At this point in my life,

I'm 70,

I find it hard to believe
what I'm told.

They taught me not to believe.

It's hard for me.

Sometimes I feel like an idiot

because I never stop asking questions

and nobody gives me the answers I want.

If someone were to tell me

they threw them out
on the top of that mountain,

I would find a way
of getting right to the top.

I'm not as strong
as I was 20 years ago.

I'm not as healthy.

It would be difficult.

But hope gives you strength.

I no longer count the times

Vicky and I have gone into the desert.

We set out full of hope

and return with our heads hanging.

But we always pick ourselves up,

give ourselves a shake

and set off again the next day
even more hopeful

and more impatient to find them.

Some people must wonder

why we want bones.

I want them so much!

And I'm not the only one.

When they found
one of Mario's jawbones,

I told them I didn't want it.

I told Dr Patricia Hernández,

"I want him whole."

"They took him away whole,
I don't want just a piece of him."

And I'm not saying it just for him,

but for all the disappeared.

All of them!

If I found him today
and I were to die tomorrow,

I would die happy.

But I don't want to die.

I don't want to die before I find him.

As I told you the other day,

I wish the telescopes

didn't just look into the sky,

but could also see through the earth

so that we could find them.

Like this...

Then, a bit further on.

We would sweep the desert
with a telescope.

Downwards.

And give thanks to the stars
for helping us find them.

I'm just dreaming.

These lines you see on the screen
form a spectrum.

This is the digital imprint of a star.

This is the spectrum.

These are the calcium lines of the star.

If my son had been executed
during any dictatorship,

no matter who I was,
my education or my beliefs,

I would never be able to forget.

I would be morally obliged
to preserve his memory.

We cannot forget our dead.

We must keep them in our memory.

The courts of justice
must do their work,

human rights organisations too,

everyone involved must take a stand.

That's to be expected.

But we absolutely cannot forget
a tragedy like this.

PISAGUA MASS GRAVE
JUNE 1 990

We must continue the search.

If they were thrown into the sea,

we will find a trace of them someday.

Many were indeed thrown into the sea.

If they put the bodies in a mine,

an abandoned place,
we'll find them eventually.

It suits them that there are
fewer and fewer of us women.

Fewer problems.

Because we are a problem.

For society, for justice, for everyone.

For them we are
the lowest of the low.

We are Chile's leprosy.

That's what I think.

IT WAS NOT A WAR
IT WAS A MASSACRE

There were many groups
of women searching:

in Arica, Iquique,

Pisagua, La Serena,

Colina, Paine, Lonquén,

Concepción, Temuco,

Punta Arenas...

These women's search never crossed paths
with that of the astronomers

who were tracking another kind of body:
celestial bodies.

Whilst these women
handled the desert matter

the astronomers discovered
that the earth's matter

was the same throughout the cosmos.

1 0,000 years ago,
the first inhabitants of Atacama

gathered the pebbles
washed up by the sea.

They also knew something of the stars

and they buried their dead at night.

Scientists collected the remains
of these men of antiquity

and classified them meticulously.

They studied them

like the pages of a unique book

and today preserve them like treasure.

When I was a child,
my mother took me to a museum

to see the skeleton of a whale.

I stayed for a long time

beneath this skeleton
that is still there today.

I imagined it was the roof of a house

where other whales could live.

Today, there are other skeletons

that are not in a museum.

They are made of calcium,

the same calcium that stars are made of.

But unlike them, they have no names.

We don't know which souls
they belonged to.

They are the remains of remains.

The remains of the disappeared
of the military dictatorship

that have not yet been identified.

I wonder

for how long
they will lie in these boxes.

Will they be placed
in a monument one day?

Will they have earned a museum space
like the whale?

Will they be given a burial one day?

Valentina works for the leading
astronomy organisation in Chile.

Her grandfather taught her
to observe the sky

when she was a child.

She is married with two children.

In 1 975, when she was one year old,

she was detained with her grandparents
by Pinochet's police.

I am the daughter
of detained and disappeared parents.

First they detained my grandparents.

They were held for several hours.

They threatened them relentlessly

to make them reveal
where my parents were,

or else I, too, would disappear.

With this threat,

my grandparents took them
to where we lived.

After detaining my parents,

they returned me to my grandparents
who brought me up.

Astronomy has somehow helped me

to give another dimension to the pain,

to the absence,

to the loss.

Sometimes, when one is alone
with that pain,

and these moments are necessary,

the pain becomes oppressive.

I tell myself it's all part of a cycle

which didn't begin
and won't end with me,

nor with my parents,
or with my children.

I tell myself
we are all part of a current,

of an energy, a recyclable matter.

Like the stars which must die

so that other stars can be born,
other planets, a new life.

In this context,

what happened to my parents

and their absence
takes on another dimension.

It takes on another meaning
and frees me a little

from this great suffering,

as I feel that nothing
really comes to an end.

My grandparents
are the happiness in my life.

Thanks to them,
I've been able to write my own story.

Not merely from a painful perspective

but also a joyful one,

optimistic,

driven by this strength
and the desire to progress.

My grandparents were wise

realising they had
a double responsibility.

They found a way

to make my parents
important reference points for me.

They passed on my parents' values
and their strength.

What is more, my grandparents
were able to overcome their pain

so that I could have

a happy and healthy childhood.

Sometimes I feel like

I'm a product
with a manufacturing defect

which is invisible.

I find it funny when people tell me
that it doesn't show

that I'm the daughter
of disappeared prisoners.

I realise that my children
don't have this defect.

Nor does my husband
and that makes me happy.

I am surrounded by people

who have no manufacturing defect.

I am happy that my son
is growing up like this.

Compared to the immensity
of the cosmos,

the problems of the Chilean people
might seem insignificant.

But if we laid them out on a table,

they would be as vast as a galaxy.

Whilst making this film, looking back,

I found in these marbles

the innocence of the Chile
of my childhood.

Back then,

each of us could carry
the entire universe

in the depths of our pockets.

I am convinced that memory
has a gravitational force.

It is constantly attracting us.

Those who have a memory

are able to live
in the fragile present moment.

Those who have none

don't live anywhere.

Each night, slowly, impassively,

the centre of the galaxy
passes over Santiago.

Subtitles by Katie Henfrey